


bury all your secrets in my skin

by ketabat



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Coda, Drabble, Eye Contact, How Do I Tag, M/M, Poetry, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 21:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19798111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ketabat/pseuds/ketabat
Summary: “Mr. Hargrove,” Mrs. Nelson greets tightly. “Late as usual” she doesn’t need to scold him to show her irritation, the glare she aims at him over her glasses enough to make the whole class stare in anticipation.aka an unrealistic drabble where Billy writes his homework. (and it's obv about Steve)





	bury all your secrets in my skin

“Alright, who would like to go first and share their poem with the class?” The teacher’s voice, albeit soft, holds the sternness of every English teacher Steve’s had over the years.

The class falls silent, evidently unwilling to cooperate. Steve didn’t even bother writing the poem, whether it’s because it seemed too personal or he just didn’t have time with all the shithead-sitting he’s been doing lately, he didn’t know. And frankly, he didn’t care either.

His eyes are fixed on his closed book, a disinterested scowl puckering his lips.

“Mr. Harrington, perhaps?” Mrs. Nelson suggests, prompting him to lift his head and give his surroundings a cursory look as if there’s another person who shares his last name around. Once he’s looking back at Mrs. Nelson, he pokes himself in the chest. “Me?” He doesn’t await an answer, clearing his throat as he adjusts his position. “It isn’t ready yet.”

“I gave you this homework last month, Mr. Harrington—”

“I know, I know” Steve interrupts. “I’m just adding finishing touches” he promises, then smiles at his book when he hears the low giggles of the classroom, half of them dreamy and the other half mocking Mrs. Nelson’s naiveté as she buys into the lie.

The door opens, quietens the class in under a second. Steve doesn’t need to look up to know who it is. He can smell cheap cigarettes, hates that he knows the exact rhythm the metal heels of Billy’s boots make against the marble of the school floors.

“Mr. Hargrove,” Mrs. Nelson greets tightly. “Late as usual” she doesn’t need to scold him to show her irritation, the glare she aims at him over her glasses enough to make the whole class stare in anticipation.

Billy smirks, bows his head with a charming smile he hopes would melt Mrs. Nelson’s heart, or at least fluster her enough to let him go again. He lifts his eyes, slides his tongue over his lips as he sways his shoulders a little. “That’s very... unmannerly of me. To tell you the truth, I stayed up late to finish your assignment.”

Steve’s knocked back on his heels by the mere idea of Billy caring to do homework, or caring to come to class at all. They share other subjects, but this has to be the only class Billy attends besides their usual encounters on the basketball court and in the boys’ locker room.

Mrs. Nelson beams, seemingly just as surprised as Steve that Billy showed interest in her class by any manner. “Very well, then!” She exclaims, “let’s hear what you’ve got. Go on” she steps back to give him room.

Billy sniffs, shifts his weight to the opposite leg and reaches into his back pocket to pull out a crumpled paper sheet as he steps behind the podium.

Mrs. Nelson would fly off the handle by the state of that dreadful paper it be anyone else, but again, _Billy Hargrove showed interest in her class._ She can’t possibly complain.

Billy sniffs again, cocks a hip with a thumb hooked into the front pocket of his jeans. Then he begins reading.

“An addiction.”

Steve tries his best to look uninterested, reclining in his seat as he swings his pencil between his fingers.

“Torture. The sweetest kind” Billy’s eyes don’t swivel from his paper as he speaks. His voice remains monotonous, lazy even.

Once again, it be anyone else, Mrs. Nelson’s hackles would be raised by the lack of emotion in his intonation. Annnnd once again, it’s Billy Hargrove finding her subject worthy of a sliver of his attention.

“The kind I want to inhale,” Billy glances up, only for a brief second before he perches his eyes back on his travesty of a paper. “To rub into my skin, to feel eat away at my soul, gnawing at my very being until there’s barely anything left.”

The silence is deafening. Makes Steve catch his breath in fear of being heard if he exhales.

“I would be incriminating you by saying your closeness kills me,” this time, when Billy raises his blue eyes from the paper, he settles them on Steve. And Steve is powerless to looking away, pencil slipping out from between his fingers. “Maybe a better wording would be eternal rest, quietus. A demise I long for, a craving ingrained in the marrow of my bone.”

Steve waits for him to look away, to divert his gaze from him to the paper or anyone else in the classroom. He feels his chest tighten the longer Billy looks at him and the longer the silence extends.

Billy goes on.

“You’re a _disease_ ,” a pause. “A disease and its antidote. Fire and water. Everything I want and everything I _can’t_ have.”

Steve’s heart gallops in the confines of his rib cage, his jaw clenching when he realises Billy is no longer reading, like he’d gone over his poem so many times he’s learnt it off by heart.

“Your shadow haunts me. Beneath the sheets at night,”

Steve can vaguely hear the wolf whistles and low _Ooos_ broadcasting through the classroom.

He tears his gaze away, feels blind to what’s beyond the window as he watches a runnel of rain trace the glass. He strains to hear Billy over the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears.

“In the bottle of whiskey I down to forget you. Kerosene to a flame of twisted desire to feel the coldness of your body against the hell beneath my skin.”

Steve’s leg bounces erratically, throat bobbing at the intimacy of the words. He can hear Mrs. Nelson whispering for Billy to keep it PG. Hears Billy’s soft chuckle and knows he’s nodding his slow, deceiving nod.

“It sickens me..how—” Billy stops, words stuck in his throat. He takes a breath and clears his throat to maintain his nonchalant tone.

Steve centres himself with a steeling breath and looks back at him.

“How I feel most alive when you hurt me, when I have you pinned down, when anger takes the place of the blood rushing through our veins.”

The memory of the night they got into a melee comes to Steve in flashes. How Billy laughed after Steve bloodied him with a hefty punch. The way he taunted him, like he _wanted_ to keep going. Like he thrived on it. _Like an addiction._

“You, are the sweetest form of suicide” Billy leans forward, braces his arms on the wooden podium as his eyes finally, _finally_ meet Steve’s, “and I would take kindly to wasting away between your fingers.”

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from [this song.](https://youtu.be/ioyNa3EdEVk)


End file.
